Friday, November 11, 2016

The government of Honduras, specifically its Supreme Court, has chosen to willfully defy an order
by the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (CIDH in Spanish) to
reinstate the 3 Honduran justices dismissed because they did not support
the 2009 coup in Honduras.

The CIDH found
on 2015 that the government of Honduras willfully violated the rights
of Adan Guillermo Lopez Lone, Tirza del Carmen Flores Lanza and Luis
Chévez de la Rocha to due process, and ordered that they be reinstated
to similar positions with full back pay. In addition, the court ordered
the government of Honduras to repay the legal expenses incurred by the
Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL) and the
Asociación de Jueces por la Democracia (ADJ).

On November 10, the last day the International Court
gave Honduras to reinstate the justices with full back pay, the court
tweeted: "The monies ordered by the the CIDH to be paid complying with
the sentence in the case of Lopez Lone and others versus Honduras has
been consigned to a bank." It also posted to its website a statement
that said in part:

"The
statement made to the beneficiaries we undertook to inform them of the
decision of the Justice Branch that it was not possible to reincorporate
them because in actuality there are no open positions which are
equivalent to those that they held at the moment of their firing, nor
with their salaries and benefits. [This is] because the positions they
held are now occupied according to the needs of the Executive branch by
individuals who have developed a judicial career. Adding to this is the
lack of positions that fulfill the parameters stipulated in the
sentence. Taking into account all the foregoing, there's nothing else
to do but look to the alternate solution, contemplated in paragraph 299
of the [CIDH] sentence, given the impossibility of re-employing them, to
fix the additional indemnitization for each of them for a year after
they were dismissed."

In
so stating, the Honduran Supreme Court chose to avail itself of
paragraph 299 of the order which says if they cannot be reinstated to
similar positions, Honduras must pay each of them the equivalent of
$150,000. In doing so, CEJIL alleges the Supreme Court of Honduras
lied. They have, all this year, been appointing justices to similar
ranked positions in courts within Honduras that at any time it could
have reinstated these justices. In fact, in the month of October alone
CEJIL says they appointed 4 judges of similar rank and benefits to two of those dismissed unjustly, to courts in San Pedro Sula.

The
Honduran Supreme Court could have complied with the order, but chose
instead to prevaricate and avail itself of a monetary solution, doing
further harm to those it denied due process. This speaks to the
corruption that is this Supreme Court in Honduras.